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Joschka Fischer was German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998-2005, a term marked by Germany's strong support for NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, followed by its opposition to the war in Iraq. Fischer entered electoral politics after participating in the anti-establishment protests of the 1960s and 1970s, and played a key role in founding Germany's Green Party, which he led for almost two decades.

I was reading the Bible the other day, the Old Testament, and it made me think of events in the Middle East. I live in the United States. The United States is easily the most religious country among the world's major powers. The American Christian Fundamentalists through their political party, the Republicans, are pushing for a new phase of the Iraq war, to counter ISIS. This does not make sense. Isis has given the Levant a Biblical authenticity. The raping and pillaging, cutting people's heads off, walls of fire and pillars of salt and divine retribution and destruction - this is the bread and butter of the Biblical view of the world. Just read the Bible and see for yourself. Thanks to ISIS the Middle East looks more Biblical than ever before, so one would think that the American fundamentalists would tip their hats to ISIS rather than trying to eradicate them.

Iran cannot be allowed to become a nuclear power under any circumstances all and any means must be used to ensure this. This said, with irrevocable climate change extremely near, fossil fuel's role in the world will suddenly deminish, and with it the importance of the Middle East. It is probably best to let the ME have its version of the 30 years war defend our borders and let them sort there own problems out.

Mr Fischer's closing comment that no single global power is likely to manage the ISIS dilemma alone could be applied wherever there is a complex dispute between natoions or even within nations. Thne simple fact is that nationa states can never resove issues which transcend theirn own borders.
We simply have to grow up and allow the planet to be governed impartially by a global auithority equipprd with legislative powere and the only legal employer of military force - and that never to wage war but only to secure the peace' http://www.garrettjones.talktalk.net

And I agree that resolving these issues is problematic, both outside a countries' borders and inside due to the simple fact of "two level game theory", as described by Putnam 1988. There are "foreigners" living inside a given country, and this very country usually has a "diaspora" outside. A similar argument was made by the president of Russia earlier this year.

Concerning the means to achieving that goal, one might as well argue that it goes the other way around; a new balance is found resolving these border conflicts, and as a consequence EMERGES a (new) global authority.

Is the jailed PKK-leader Abdullah Öcalan still relevant to the Kurds? Although the US and the EU see the PKK as a "terrorist organisation", the PKK fighters are likely to be the ones in the region, who would be "able to stop the Islamic State's further advance" .
Fischer says, a "new Middle East" may see new national borders drawn, as well as "an enhanced role for the Kurds and Iran, and diminished influence for the region’s Sunni powers". The Kurds may emerge as big "winners". Iran's influence in the region depends on how the civil war in Syria will end and how the new Shia-led government in Iraq fares with its Sunni and Kurdish minorities.
Indeed the "old order" in the Middle East is unraveling. Artificially created nation states like Iraq and Syria, as a result of the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War One, are on the verge of crumbling.
In Syria Assad controls Damascus and the Alawite stronghold around the Mediterranean port of Latakia. The Syrian Kurds have their territory on the Turkish border and are fighting against ISIS for survival. The rebels and ISIS occupy the rest of Syria. Iraq is technically divided into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions. The Iraqi Kurdistan has already its autonomy.
The only reason why the West doesn't encourage the Iraqis and Syrians to secede and seek independence is the fear of a Kurdish state, straddling Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Both Iran and Turkey will strongly oppose to their Kurdish minorities' ambition to break away and join the Iraqi Kurds to form a greater Kurdistan, which would make up of some 40 million Kurds.
Turkey is a NATO member! The West doesn't fear so much of an ISIS invasion of Turkey, but it worries what Ankara may do. The Turks see no difference between PKK and ISIS and their reluctance to let PKK fighters help their brethren in Kobane had enraged Kurds all over the world. Eventually Ankara had softened its stance and allowed Iraqi peshmerga to transit through Turkey to Kobane.
Iran's relationship with Israel and the Sunni Arab states remains a Gordian knot. No doubt the sectarian tensions in the Muslim world have much to do with power politics of incumbent leaders. As long as the Shia/Sunni divide and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persist, "the Middle East will remain the powder keg of world politics in the twenty-first century".

While it may be true that Iranian and Kurdish influence is is on the rise, the author misses the point. The purported complexity is only a means to divert attention from some of the real problems for which Western govenments (current and previous) are largely responsible.
No word is spent on the supportive (Saudi-Arabia, Qatar) or at least permissive (Turkey) attitude that a number of close Western allies have taken towards the rise of IS. Turkey in particular is thereby exposing its NATO partners to a tremendous risk with almost no public objection so far.
The author further fails to mention the third relevant party in the Syrian civil war (and Iran's closest ally), the Syrian government.
His bid to arm the various Kurdish groups in Syria (Peshmerga, PKK etc.) is thus based on the wrong assumption that it is only IS the Kurds will have to face.

But reality will prove things to be even more complex. Arming the Kurds, which may seem like a cheap and clean alternative to the West's own military involvement, will not improve things as long as an overarching strategy is missing. There is no easy way out and we should refrain from setting fire to explosives if we don't know the way out.

I am not sure we can talk about "winners and losers" in such a complicated, volatile and ever changing area as the Middle East.

Moreover in a concentrated, explosive manner the Middle East gives us a model of the whole global world, where interests, goals, desires and opinions are so intermingled, contradicting and paradoxical, that using our present "reason and logic", our old school tools and methods we are only putting more oil on the fire, inflaming the raging flames even more.

We evolved into a global, integral system where each and every individual and nation is tightly interconnected and inter-dependent.
In such a system we should not even move a finger without having a full understanding f the state and direction of the complete system.

As the article points out at the end such vision, such understanding can only be achieved with a fully mutual, equal and complementing cooperation.

We have to learn our new existential circumstances where there are no local, regional, "brokered" negotiations, solutions.

Hermann is surely right. It is high time the UN was empowered to fulfill the role it was meant to have in 1945 but has never been allowed to have. Nation states have to satisfy their own electorates; only the UN has the possibility of satisfying the whole global community.